In manufacturing industries, tracking and traceability of components over a production lifecycle, from raw parts to a final finished product, is critical for efficient production and supply management. In some industrial sectors, such as the automotive sector, traceability of parts from finished products is a legal requirement because it allows manufacturers to pinpoint the products in the case of any recall or other defects after the manufacturing processes. Therefore, tracking and traceability is an important and necessary function in most manufacturing execution system (MES) and production lifecycle management (PLM) system.
Commonplace technologies that implement tracking and traceability functions mostly rely on human manual sorting and/or labeling; scanning of barcodes; laser engraving on parts; attaching radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags; and the like. In some instances, rudimentary interfaces and solutions are available in some PLM systems and MESs to record and track added tags or barcodes within a database, to enable components tracking and traceability while the parts are moving on the production line until becoming a finished product.
Therefore, much remains to be improved in technologies that implement tracking and traceability of components over a production lifecycle.